by L. W. Jacobs
More thunder shook the room, dust and debris raining down through the rents in the ceiling. Enough of this. Tai cleared his throat. “Speaking of those shamans, we still have some to face. Nauro, can you keep protecting us like you did back there?”
“From shamans like those, yes,” Nauro said, casting a cool glance at Avery. “Once we get into the garden around the stone, well, it’s not just a matter of skill there. You may have noticed your uai increasing as you get closer to the stone.”
Tai nodded, but Feynrick grinned. “If by increasing you mean taking twenty years off my back.”
“It is an exponential rather than incremental increase,” Nauro said. “We are strengthened out here. Those closest to the stone wield powers near to Semeca’s herself.”
The burly Yatiman shrugged. “Milkweed here killed her once. Hounds, I almost did! We can do it again.”
Nauro pursed his lips. “Semeca was something of an odd case. We suspect other archrevenants are like her, but… there is a laziness that comes from having a wealth of uai. A certainty you can defeat anything or anyone. We in the ninespears have not had that luxury, so we’ve had to make the most of our limited uai. Innovated over the centuries, even if we as often hoard that knowledge as promulgate it.”
Tai swallowed. “So you’re saying I beat Semeca because she didn’t know how to use her own power?”
“Not as these shamans do. They have the benefit of our innovation along with new strength.”
Marea shook her head. “Then why aren’t you with them? You killed those two out there like they were nothing.”
Her face only paled slightly when she talked about it—the girl had hardened in the days since their first attack on Ninefingers Pass.
“Because they cannot open the stone,” Nauro said. “And because I don’t think I could either, even if I was willing to break our contract.”
Ella raised an eyebrow. “So you’ve just been here, waiting for us to arrive?”
“Not long, but yes. Once I got a body I then had to thrall enough revenants to have a stream, find where you were likely headed next, and waft. I have been here about a week.”
Tai tried to keep his mind off how powerful Nauro was. If the man decided to hurt them, or betray them at the stone, there would be little they could do. “So, you can’t open the stone, but you think we can?”
“I am a student of history, Tai, and if my studies have taught me anything it is to pay attention to the anomalies. The Prophet was one such. The merchant Eynas Mettelken was another, and you are a third. If anyone can open the stone, if anyone was meant to open the stone, it’s you.”
Tai didn’t know what to say to that.
Marea did. “So you think he can open the stone because you believe in him?” Her tone made it clear how stupid she thought that was.
Nauro cleared his throat. “He killed a god, without any shamanic knowledge, after centuries of our best shamans trying and failing. The descendants of whom are here now, and once again failing. But no, I do not expect it to open from his touch alone. We also have the edge of knowledge.”
“Knowledge?” Ella asked. “We know hardly more than we did—just Ollen’s passage on an unholy chorus, and your line of She who seeks uai from the stone must first give it.”
“And all the things that have failed in the week since I got here,” Nauro said. “And there have been many.”
“Like what?” Tai asked.
“Physical attacks against the stone. I’ve seen shamans blast it with lightning, burn it, slam boulders into it, try to melt it, even a Seinjialese man with a massive iron wedge to break it apart. Nothing works.”
“Okay,” Ella said. “That makes sense. Those are all pretty literal solutions to opening the stone, and they fit giving uai to the stone to get it back, but not an unholy chorus. Do they not know of the other passage?”
Nauro glanced at Avery. “Ninespears are normally very secretive with our knowledge, especially with ancient texts. It may be that Ollen’s cell was the only one in possession of that passage, or that read it in light of Semeca’s defeat. That secrecy is part of the reason I have seen so many attempts on the stone in the past week.”
Tai frowned. Talking to Nauro was like trying to read one of Ella’s books. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the shamans closest to the stone, and there are four, are not lacking in power. They each wield essentially a quarter of Semeca’s power. They could easily destroy anyone who enters the garden, no matter our skill. But they have all tried and failed to open the stone on their own. They have power but lack knowledge.”
“They’re letting people in, aren’t they?” Ella asked. “Watching what they do before they kill them.”
“Yes. Or they were until two days ago, when a pilgrim nearly opened it.”
“A pilgrim?” Tai asked, surprised. “Not a shaman?”
“And she nearly opened it?” Ella said, looking just as surprised. “Why didn’t they repeat what she did?”
Nauro shook his head. “They tried, but whatever got her that close did not work for them. Still, they’re not taking chances anymore. Anyone who enters without their thoughts blocked is killed almost immediately, and anyone who can shield their thoughts is allowed to live only until the shamans break through and read what they’re intending.”
Ancestors. Their secrets were usually what put them in danger—now they’d be the only thing keeping them safe.
“And this pilgrim, she was trying to break the stone as the others did?”
“No,” Nauro said. “I am not sure what she did, but since then the shamans have been trying to alter the chemy of the stone, or enter into it.”
“And none of those attempts have worked?” Ella asked.
“None.”
Something boomed outside. Shamans battling each other, or more pilgrims trying to get in?
“Doesn’t sound like they’re letting them live long,” Feynrick said, glancing at the shreds of afternoon sky visible above.
“No,” Nauro said. “The shamans out here are those who’ve failed to earn themselves a place in the garden, and their outlook is quite different. Most of them hope the shamans inside will eventually turn on each other, and make room for new ones. Until then, they are doing their best to keep anyone else from getting in.”
“Including an entire whitecoat legion,” Tai said, then filled Nauro in on the scene at the moat, and all the military they’d seen in the outer city.
“We’ll deal with them once we have the spear,” Nauro said. “As I recall, Tai, you have some experience defeating armies with uai?”
Marea looked at the slender man, open-mouthed. “Nauro. Was that a joke?”
The shaman looked embarrassed, of all things. “I—have been long without company. Excuse me.”
Ella appeared to have missed the entire exchange, eyes distant in thought. “Most of the attempts you describe fit with the passage on giving uai to the stone to get it back, but not with Ollen’s notion of an unholy chorus.”
“Good,” Tai said. “Hopefully they don’t know about that. And we’ve seen lots of failed attempts on the unholy chorus too.” He turned to Avery, who still cast troubled looks at Nauro. “Did any of the songs Ollen tried have any more effect than the others?”
“None,” Avery said, licking his lips. “We tried every possible song by every possible faith, multiple times, with nothing.”
“And the formations of revenants we saw?” Ella asked. “What was that?”
“A different way of thinking about chorus,” Avery said. “Credelen thought maybe it meant chorus like in the old Yersh sense of the word, when their dramas had big groups of actors chanting together and dancing in unison. His theory was that the makers of the stones would be familiar with that, and revenants could be an unholy version of the old holy plays.”
Ella twitched her lips, likely looking for a pen to bite. “But it didn’t work?”
“No.”
“But this time could be different!”
Marea exclaimed. “This stone is active, and all this uai—”
“Unfortunately,” Nauro said, “we will not have weeks to experiment, or even days. So long as we keep our thoughts firmly blocked I do not think the shamans will attack us. But with the amount of uai they’re wielding, I suspect it will take all of Avery’s and my skill to keep them from reading our thoughts. And I doubt we can do it for long.”
Tai’s shoulders knotted. “For what, like half a hand? Enough time to try a few things?”
Nauro adjusted his cuffs. “More like a finger. We need to have a plan.”
“I do have a plan,” Ella said. “I thought about this a lot, as we traveled north. The clues are about uai and a chorus. Musical. And we discovered the resonances are musical—they can be tuned with each other, and that harmony helps people overcome their revenants. So maybe the chorus they’re speaking of is like that, too. We give the stone uai in the form of a resonant chorus.”
For a moment they just stared at her. Then Marea broke into a grin and said, “Ella, you’re a genius!”
Even Avery lightened up, and Feynrick slapped Ella on the back hard enough to almost knock her over. “There’s them brains!”
“That… could work,” Nauro said.
Ella finally smiled, and Tai felt his love for her get bigger yet. There were so many ways she impressed him, felt like someone miles beyond him, and this was just one more: she was a genius.
“It is also exactly the kind of thought we need to keep them from reading,” Nauro said, glancing around as though he might see shamans peeking in. “That may be the best idea anyone’s brought to the stone so far.”
“And it’s an idea no one else could even have,” Marea said, “because they don’t know about the resonances.”
“They’re the whole reason Semeca was attacking us!” Tai said, excitement and relief welling inside. This was a plan. This was something they might pull off. “It wasn’t our rebellion, or the yura—she said we were discovering things better left hidden.”
The smiles around the circle got even wider.
“Okay,” Feynrick said. “Ye figured out the smart part. Now the stupid part: how do we get in?”
57
What they came up with did feel pretty stupid. At least that’s what Marea thought as they walked the final streets to the garden of the waystone, boots scraping on loose debris. The old city was demolished this close in, ancient temples shattered, exotic gardens withered and burnt, air smelling of smoke and the bodies that littered the cobblestones. She tried not to look at them, or to think about the danger they were going into. But every few minutes lightning would strike or stones would start falling from the sky, and most of the time they were pointed at Avery.
Avery, who had been so close to dying before Nauro came. Avery, who was her reason for being here. Her only reason to be anywhere, anymore.
Avery, who’d pulled her close as they left the last shelter and whispered in her ear, “Stay close to me. We’ll get through this. I love you.”
Said the words as casually as Feynrick talking about dinner. Then walked out into this sea of death and danger with his back straight and his head up.
She loved and hated him for that confidence. Thunder clapped and she jumped, but there was already a smoking hole in the ground, and a man screaming somewhere in the leaning buildings above them. Nauro nodded at them to keep walking, and a body hit the street with a wet thump.
Marea took a deep breath. Ella had a plan and Nauro was strong and Avery had said they’d get through this. But she still screamed when one of the few multi-roofed temples still standing suddenly fell at them and wood and tile and gilt-inlaid stone shattered all around them and the structure blasted apart to reveal two shamans floating in the sky and Nauro did something with his right hand that killed them both.
Screamed not only from sheer terror, but because they were trying to kill Avery. And if she lost him she lost everything.
Marea walked on, shaking. She was relieved to see Ella looking the same. She wished she felt confident enough to strike resonance. They could all use a little luck right now, but without her mind in solid control, she was as likely to bring bad luck down on them as good.
And that was the last thing they needed, with temples falling from the sky.
“This is the last street,” Nauro said when they’d climbed from the wreckage. “Remember the plan.”
The plan was insane, but then so was the whole situation. They were to step into the garden around the stone, full of the world’s most powerful shamans, and not do anything but walk to the stone. Don’t think, don’t speak, don’t strike resonance, don’t do anything they might construe as a threat. Just walk. While the strongest shamans in the world looked for an excuse to kill them.
Insane. Stupid. But mostly because it meant she could do nothing to protect Avery.
Ahead of them the waystone rose like a giant glittering knife, like someone had stabbed Saicha itself and left the hilt sticking up to mark what they’d done. To her right a body lay face down in the street, blood dried in a black pool around it.
Marea looked away, almost wishing for another firestorm, an ambush, anything to take her mind off that body. Avery was worth it, was worth everything she’d done, but the thought kept coming back to her: what would it matter if they died today?
Or worse, if just he died, and she had to live with what she’d done?
She couldn’t help the sick dread in her stomach as they reached the end of the street, as the cobblestones opened up into a circular plaza three hundred paces across, the land rising in terraced gardens to the base of the massive stone. The dread had nothing to do with the carrion birds circling overhead, crying, waiting for the next kill. Nor the looks of apprehension on her friends’ faces, nor even the shamans circling the stone, cloaks rippling in an unseen wind.
It was dread because she could not protect Avery here, and if he died she would be worse than dead.
“Forward,” Nauro muttered into the thick silence. “Quickly now.”
They went, footsteps echoing in the stone-walled enclosure, climbing the long shallow stairs that led to the stone, passing concentric terrace gardens once filled with life, now blasted or bloodied or blooming in isolated patches. The air felt thick against her skin, like a thunderstorm in late summer, only instead of humidity this was pure uai. Her heart beat faster and all her senses hummed, drawn to the stone towering over them, glittering in the late afternoon sun.
Somewhere in its heart lay a spear with the power of a god—and the key to her future with Avery. All she had to do was keep him safe until they got it.
“Stop,” a voice rang out from the heights.
Marea’s head shot back. There was a fifth shaman, floating at the very top of the tower. She could only imagine the power he controlled, if the raw uai coursing through her veins was any indication, still two hundredpace from the stone.
“What is your purpose here?” the man called down.
“You know what it is, Aeyenor,” Nauro said, not raising his voice or his head. His face bore a look of intense concentration.
“Nauro of Speyshore,” the man said, voice booming against the multi-tiered temples ringing the garden. “And Harides of Seingard, if I am not mistaken. Do not waste your lives here. Give me your knowledge and I may spare you.”
“Keep walking,” Nauro said, even as Marea’s mind spun. Harides of Seingard? He could only be talking about Avery, but Avery was from Worldsmouth. Avery was Avery. And why would he know of him, only a journeyman in their society?
“You cannot keep us out forever,” Aeyenor called down. “This uai we have—” he spread his hands and laughed, and there was more than a little madness in it. Marea shuddered. She wanted to scream at Avery to do it, to throw herself down and beg the man to spare her lover’s life, but Avery walked as grim-faced as the rest, eyes on the stone. He wouldn’t give up. That wasn’t his way.
So she walked on with him, feeling the uai bu
ild inside like a giant breath being drawn in, ever in, ready to blast out as song or horn or tempest wind. What fates could she walk with this much uai? Could she stop his death?
One hundred fifty paces. One hundred, late afternoon sun beating down on them, her bones humming with uai, the hairs on her arms beginning to stand, into the long shadow the stone cast across the old city. The four shamans at the base of the stone circled to face them, to stand between them and their goal.
At fifty paces Nauro said “Now. Strike them.”
Feynrick struck first, as they’d discussed, the grizzled man grinning as brawler’s resonance buzzed out of him, stronger than Marea had ever felt it. “Yapping finally,” he said. “When do we fight?”
Tai struck next, the wafter’s resonance rattling from him even stronger than usual, a peace coming into his eyes as the power took him. He’d been troubled the whole trip, since before the first stone. Had he found some peace with his voice?
Tai and Feynrick were out of tune, jarring sensation in her bones, but she could feel the wafter flexing his resonance, trying to make it fit. They had never tried six resonances at once, not even five. It meant every resonance had to sync with the others. The higher resonances were easier to flex than the lower, so they’d decided to start lowest, with the higher ones fitting in to what the lower ones made. Ella would strike last of all, for obvious reasons.
There—the vibration in her bones settled into a harmony. Avery struck, using the mosstongue resonance he’d been born with, and quickly found a third note to complete the chord.
What is this? her voice said, suddenly waking up.
She smiled. This is most likely your undoing, revenant, she thought at it. If I die here, at least I can die without listening to you lie.
Nauro struck, representing the mindseye resonance, his tone already a perfect fit for Feynrick’s, a full octave above. They were thirty paces from the stone now, the shamans raising their hands as if to strike. But they would not strike until they discovered Ella’s plan.
If Nauro was right, that was.
“What is this?” Aeyenor’s voice boomed down. “What are you doing?”